Glossary
5 à 7
French for '5 to 7', also used by Montreal Anglos. Drinks after work - an artform in Montreal. We Montrealers all know that in Toronto they're just leaving the office when we're just leaving the terrasse (see below).
Alouettes
Montreal's Canadian Football League team. Don't ask me what the difference is between Canadian and American football. Maybe the Canadians are more polite when they bash the hell out of each other. Maybe the distances are measured in metres. Maybe the quarterbacks have to call their plays in English and French. Maybe they wear skates. Oh, no - that's another sport.
Anglo
Short for anglophone. Someone in Canada whose native language is English. The French equivalent is francophone.
Aquavit
Norwegian eau-de-vie, or pure alcohol. A kind of state-controlled moonshine, as far as my taste-buds can tell.
BC
British Columbia. Also known as lotus land because of the peace-loving, nature-focussed healthy lifestyle. Fans of BC talk about it like it's paradise. Personally, I think it's boring.
Big O
What Montrealers call the Olympic Stadium, from its circular shape. Also spelled Big Owe, after the amount of money the government (read: 'my parents and other taxpayers like them') spent on it, even years after the Olympics were over. A huge expanse of concrete, with a roof that keeps breaking, despite being made from 'space-age materials'. I guess the Challenger Space Shuttle was made from 'space age materials' too…
Biodome
A few years ago the Olympic Stadium (see Big O, above) velodrome was, to the consternation of cyclists, converted in to a huge indoor wildlife habitat consisting of four environments: rainforest, arctic, regular forest and the one I always forget. It's actually one of the best things to visit in Montreal, and a cross between a zoo and a safari park. They say that at night you can still hear the ghostly sound of bicycle wheels circling the building and that a penguin was once found dead on the ice covered in tire tracks...
CBC
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Earnest, state-controlled TV and radio. The radio is far more entertaining than the TV for some reason. I think it might be because Canadians are a chatty bunch, and chat works well on the radio. When it comes to TV though, wow, does Canada stink! Oh well, can’t win ’em all.
Chrétien
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Been in power with the liberals for, I don't know, eight years or so. He's a truly hilarious character - a couple of years ago he whacked an intruder in his bedroom on the head with an Inuit sculpture. Once, on an official tour, surrounded by people, he grabbed a protester around the throat because he thought he was going to be attacked by him. Not just his behaviour, but the way he speaks is hilarious too. He completely mangles the English language, doesn't do much better in French, and had some kind of palsy as a youth which left one side of his mouth drooping when he speaks. A cartoonist's wet-dream. As a politician he's very wily and ruthless. As a Prime Minister, I think most Canadians would rather have someone much more plain and boring, as our stereotype would leave foreigners to expect.
Concordia
My university. Got a great arts program. See McGill below.
Crescent St.
A street in downtown Montreal which is lined with bars and restaurants. The bars are best described as 'meet markets'. It's very popular with Gino guys and bimbos during Grand Prix week (see below).
CRTC
Canadian Radio and Television Commission. The governing body which hands out licences for radio and TV stations in Canada. Unfortunately also the governing body which decides what we can watch. That’s why (until 2002) Canada was one of the only places in the world where you couldn’t watch MTV. Thank Ozzy someone finally made a Canadian version so that the CRTC gave them a licence.
Dollar Day
What B— called the Fête de Dollard: a Quebec public holiday in May, which is called Victoria Day in the rest of Canada, after the old queen. Dollard was a seventeenth-century fur trader who became a Quebec national hero for some reason. Just as good an excuse for a holiday as being queen, I say.
Eastern Townships
The historically English part of Quebec east and south of Montreal, towards the American border. Mostly small towns and farmland. My mother lives there.
Empanada
A Chilean mini-pie or pasty, usually containing beef, artichokes or spinach. Olga's serves them to comply with the bar's restaurant licence. They are made by some Chilean people who have a store on Napoleon, up the road from Olga's.
Event Horizon
When John read the diary entry which mentions the event horizon he informed me that what I wrote isn't really the case. Apparently for observers who are far away from the black hole it seems as though time slows down, and the poor person who's getting sucked into it takes forever to disappear the closer they get to the event horizon. However, for the person getting sucked in, they don't notice time passing any differently than usual.
False friend
A French word or phrase which sounds like it should be a translation of a word in English, and vice-versa, but isn't. People who think they know French but don't really get tripped up often by false friends, such as librairie, which isn't French for library, as you'd think, but for bookshop. Or, in English, francophones might use the word sensible when they shouldn't, because in French it means sensitive.
Frenching
Kissing with tongue. A French kiss. I'm not sure if English-speakers outside Montreal use this as a verb. (That's one of the weird effects of being an anglo-Montrealer — you're on slightly shaky foundations as far as your own mother tongue is concerned.) Funnily enough, even francophones use this word to mean the same thing, so a Quebecoise girl might say, "Je l'ai frenché," which means, "I French-kissed him."
Grand Prix
The Formula 1 motor race, held in Montreal (actually on an island in the river) every June. It's a bit like the circus coming to town for a huge section of the population. Not the most quiet or stylish section, either.
Hoochie
A guy I was at college with once explained to me what a hoochie is. It's a girl/young woman, usually of Mediterranean extraction (Italian, Greek, Lebanese, etc.) with straight, shoulder-length highlighted brown hair, who wears either tight-fitting black pants with flares at the ankle or a tight black skirt above the knee, a blouse and a thin black leather jacket. Now, this might seem like a description which would only match a narrow group of individuals, but, believe me, in Montreal (and Toronto, where my friend was from) there are thousands of girls like this, though they may have variations on the theme depending on a particular year's fashion. In Montreal you only have to go out on St-Laurent (see below) on a Friday or Saturday night to see gaggles of them waiting in line outside clubs. The weird thing about hoochies is that they can only see other hoochies. If you encounter a group of them they will never acknowledge your existence (unless you're a hoochie too). I guess they have a special hoochie sense.
Ice Storm
In January 1998 Quebec and northern New England received several days of freezing rain. At the beginning it was great because the trees and lampposts looked like they were covered in frosting, like Christmas decorations. There was a beautiful fairy-tale look to everything. After three days, the branches began to droop excessively and within a day there was an emergency situation. Power lines fell, thousands of trees died. People had no power or fresh water. The army was called in. This was the Ice Storm. It just shows how thin the protective layer of civilization is, when it can disappear so fast.
John Manley
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister. One of the most important jobs in the world, because if anything should happen to the reigning Miss Universe, he takes her place.
La Ronde
Montreal’s amusement park, located on an island in the St. Lawrence river. It’s got the world’s biggest wooden rollercoaster, which is pretty Scooby-Do-ish, in the sense that when dusk is falling it looks like the location of almost every episode I can remember. La Ronde has, I believe, cheap admission for welfare recipients (ironically called B.S. in French for Bien-être Social), which means that if you go on a weekday the majority of the people enjoying the rides (or I should say getting frazzled by the sun while waiting in line for the rides) have a similar social status. In other words it’s the mullet capital of the world. There are some pretty good rides though and the world’s most expensive poutine (see below).
Laurentians
Small mountain range north of Montreal. Quite beautiful, with a mix of evergreen and deciduous forests, and loads of lakes. Cottage country for those who can afford cottages.
MAC
Le Musée d'art contemporain. Montreal's Contemporary Art Museum. Not a bad collection, but not good either. There's a reason that so few Quebec artists are world-renowned, and if you go to the MAC you'll see why — it's very provincial. The Quebec art community is so grant-oriented that there's no market for art. So it's the people on the funding bodies who decide which art is worth seeing (and even making) and which art isn't. That leads to very inward-looking art, as far as I can see. It also leads to artists not giving a shit whether their art appeals to anyone outside the funding bodies, which is why it's so provincial.
Macleans
Venerable Canadian weekly news magazine, a bit like Time.
McGill
Montreal's oldest university. One of the best in North America. I went to the other one — Concordia.
Medicare
The Canadian health system, which is basically publicly-funded, with certain services not covered. It's administered by the provinces, but funded to some extend by the federal government, which makes for a lot of arguing in that polite, Canadian way. I'm sure when I'm older I'll care a lot more about that debate.
Metro
The Montreal subway system. Built for the Expo 67, and still the best one I've ever seen.
Mile End
A neighbourhood of Montreal. Once a poor place to live which attracted Jewish and Greek immigrants, but now almost as hip as the Plateau (see below).
Mondiale de la Bière
A beer festival held in the former concourse of Montreal's Windsor Station. It's a bit annoying because there are so many people, and you have to buy tickets for tasting, just like at a wine festival. But it's beer, for god's sake!
Mont-Royal
The mountain in the centre of Montreal. More of a hill, really, but it makes for a good natural wilderness area/teen fondling area. There is a city building code which prevents skyscrapers taller than the mountain, so it will always feel like a mounting. The only negative aspect of it is a huge illuminated cross which, while being one of the symbols of Montreal, is hardly a welcoming image for immigrants who belong to other religions. The best view of Mont-Royal is probably the one you see as you approach from the South Shore via the Champlain Bridge. The same view, this time from a helicopter, is in the opening sequence of the movie The Whole Nine Yards, which features the world's worst Quebecois accent, by Rosanna Arquette.
Mousse
French for the head on a pint of beer.
Moving day
The vast majority of apartment leases in Quebec expire on July 1st. The result is that half of Montreal seems to be moving on the nearest weekend. Trucks have to be rented weeks ahead of time and getting friends to help is a pain because you always know three or four people who are moving the same day. There's a theory that the separatist government chose July 1st as moving day because it is Canada Day, so that people would be too busy to attend parades and other celebrations.
NFB
National Film Board. Canada's government-funded organisation which ensures that lots of well-meaning documentaries, short films and animated shorts get produced by well-meaning people every year. These films are watched by the same well-meaning people, their friends and families.
Place des Arts
Montreal's arts centre.
Plateau
Hip neighbourhood in Montreal. Once voted one of the four coolest places to live in North America by Utne Reader. When I was younger Mont-Royal street was a place with a high concentration of tavernes (see below), dollar stores and crazy people shouting at thin air. Now the tavernes are all bistros with fusion food, the dollar stores have vanished and the crazy people have followed their imaginary enemies to other neighbourhoods further east.
Poutine
Ahhh…poutine! National dish of the Quebecois. French fries, cheese curds and gravy, served with a healthy salad. Okay, the salad part is made up - it's just fries, cheese curds and gravy. You either love it or hate it or are too scared to even try it. And it's got to be locally-produced cheese curds - the kind that they call 'squeaky cheese' (because when you eat it alone it's kind of rubbery and goes squeak against your teeth.) As for the gravy, it should be the kind used in another local delicacy, a 'hot chicken' (pronounced 'Ot chickEN'), which means a chicken sandwich made with Wonderbread-style white, sliced bread, doused, no, drowned, in gravy and eaten with a knife and fork.I'm sure there's some kid of evil-genius failed chef holed up in a lair somewhere in Quebec who comes up with this stuff. Other 'recipes' of his would be the 'pogo' (a sausage coated with batter, on a stick), the 'Mae West' (chocolate-covered cream pastry containing no actual pastry) and the local incarnation of a slushie, called a 'Sloche', the most undrinkable of which must be the blue one, called 'Winshere wacher' (the French transliteration of 'windshield washer', ie. the blue fluid you put into your car about eight times per winter.)
RCMP
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 'The Mounties' to everyone else in the world. I believe Disney now has exclusive rights to their red coat/brown hat costumes, but I'm not sure.
Rousse
Red beer. Pale beer in Quebec is called blonde.
St-Jean Baptiste Day
June 24th - Quebec's national holiday. There is a parade on the nearest Sunday, organised by the St-Jean Baptiste society, which promotes the protection of French culture and language in Quebec. They try very hard to integrate non-white participants and talk about diversity, but I've got a feeling they're not really all that keen on real diversity. Oddly, St-Jean Baptiste Day is exactly one week before Canada Day.
St-Laurent
In English, St. Lawrence Blvd. The hugely diverse, historically-fascinating central boulevard of Montreal which divides the city not only into East and West (the street numbers start there) but into English and French. Too much history to talk about here. Look it up yourself.
Tam-tams
Every Sunday during Montreal's summer a gathering takes place at the foot of the mountain, near what my dad still calls Fletcher's Field. It's the hippies, the punks, the alternative types, all getting together to relax, have fun, buy some cool stuff from each other and listen to the tribal rhythms of the tam-tam drums that a bunch of them bring with them. It all started very spontaneously a few years ago and now it's an institution. There's never any violence, never any trouble. It's so nice that people can 'make their own fun' without being involved in some kind of corporate-proscribed event.
Taverne
French for tavern, obviously. In some parts of Montreal where they were once commonplace tavernes have now disappeared due to gentrification. A taverne typically would be a working man's bar, low on style, fancy drinks and women.
Terrasse
French for a 'patio', used by Montreal anglos. Montrealers love to sit out on terrasses. Partly because of the superb people-watching to be had here and partly because when winter lasts six months, people make the most of the warm weather.
Tisane The French word for caffeine-free herbal tea.
Thanksgiving The Canadian version of the holiday which in the States is in November.
T.O.
Toronto, Ontario. Otherwise known as The Big Cabbage. Just like the rich kids at school, no matter how much money Toronto has, it’ll never be as cool as Montreal.
Vice
Free magazine begun in Montreal in the mid nineties, became very successful with its mix of music, fashion, vulgarity and humour. They moved their office to New York in about 2000 and the mag became a bit too slick for my liking.
Zamboni
The steamroller-like vehicle which cleans and somehow resurfaces the ice in hockey arenas. One of the things Canada can be most proud of. I don't know if we invented it (look it up yourself on the web) but we've certainly popularised it in the States. I suspect that the Canadian Armed Forces might have an armoured zamboni division just waiting to defend us against that sneak attack from Greenland.